2018 Global Wellness Trends Report Copyright © 2017-2018 by Global Wellness Summit. If you cite ideas and information in this report please credit “2018 Wellness Trends, from Global Wellness Summit”. For more information, email [email protected] or visit www.globalwellnesssummit.com. CONTENTS 1. Mushrooms Emerge from Underground 2 Whether “magic” or medicinal, shrooms’ superpowers come to light 2. A New Era of Transformative Wellness Travel 14 Circuits, sagas and epic storylines 3. Reframing the First 1,000 Days 24 Pre-conception & paternity enter the health equation 4. The Wellness Kitchen 34 Kitchens catch up with healthy eating 5. Getting our “Clean Air Act” Together 48 Taking personal responsibility for the air we breathe 6. Extreme Wellness 56 Hacking our way to better brains, bodies and overall well-being 7. Wellness Meets Happiness 64 The conversation becomes more important 8. A New Feminist Wellness 74 From a surge in women-only, wellness-infused clubs and co-working spaces - to a storm of FemTech “solving” for women’s bodies ABOUT THE AUTHORS BETH MCGROARTY Director of Research, Global Wellness Summit Beth McGroarty oversees the Global Wellness Summit’s annual Trends Report and is its lead author. She has been the Summit’s Director of Research for eight years, and serves in the same capacity for the Global Wellness Institute (GWI) since its founding four years ago. She is also the editor of the GWI’s “Global Wellness Brief” and its website, WellnessEvidence.com, the first online resource dedicated to the medical evidence for top wellness approaches. She has a BA from Barnard College and an MA from Stanford University. BETSY ISROELIT Founder, RBI Creative Betsy Isroelit has led strategic marketing and communications campaigns for global wellness, entertainment and technology brands for nearly 20 years. Over the past decade, she has worked with Susie Ellis and Beth McGroarty to develop forecasts for the wellness industry and to conduct research on emerging trends, such as wellness travel. Betsy is recognized for using her understanding of consumers to predict societal shifts that change how business is conducted. She is an elected member of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Councils. CASSANDRA CAVANAH Owner, Cavanah Communications Cassandra Cavanah has been part of the Global Wellness Summit team since inception and, among her many accomplishments, has authored several spa and wellness trends reports over the years working closely with Beth McGroarty and Susie Ellis. In addition, Cassandra is the editor of the “Guide to Hydrothermal Spa & Wellness Development Standards” for the Global Wellness Institute’s Hydrothermal Initiative Cassandra also works on PR and marketing initiatives for the Summit and Institute and holds an English degree from UCLA. SUSIE ELLIS Chairman and CEO, Global Wellness Institute and Global Wellness Summit Susie Ellis is chairman and CEO of the Global Wellness Institute, the nonprofit research and educational resource for the global wellness industry. She is also co-founder, chairman and CEO of the Global Wellness Summit, an international gathering of senior executives and leaders, which is entering its 12th year. Recognized as a top authority on the worldwide wellness industry, she is frequently quoted in major news outlets around the world. She holds an MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is the recipient of the International Spa Association’s Visionary Award. PREFACE 2018 Global Wellness Trends Report Each year, the Global Wellness Summit (GWS) identifies new trends that will have a meaningful impact on the $3.7 trillion wellness industry. Significantly, this is the only wellness forecast that draws from the insights of the 600-plus executives who were delegates and presenters at the 2017 Global Wellness Summit. In addition, the GWS Forecast is the sole trends report based on the perspectives of renowned economists, medical and wellness professionals, academics, and leaders across all sectors of the wellness industry. On the opening day of the Summit, the non-profit lifestyle habits during preconception–and the Global Wellness Institute launched “The Wellness health of the father’s sperm–will impact a child’s Moonshot,” the first global commitment to health for a lifetime. The new Wellness Kitchen achieve a world free of preventable disease. And will (finally) become a reflection of our current in many ways, The Moonshot perfectly reflects wellness values and lifestyle, instead of serving as this 2018 Wellness Trends Forecast. Each of the a relic of the past. Extreme wellness approaches, eight trends speaks to either entrepreneurial such as a surge in DNA/biomarker testing to or personal wellness moonshots that push the create a hyper-personal health roadmap, are health and wellness envelope in unprecedented on the rise. And people are taking charge of air ways. We predict that these very new directions quality, a health crisis that governments have not in wellness will grow worldwide and become big addressed in meaningful ways. A new happiness businesses in the years ahead. science is identifying what we need to focus on in wellness, and in this year of female empowerment, For instance, seemingly “out there” magic a new feminist wellness is rapidly emerging. mushrooms show promise to treat depression and anxiety–and major academic institutions As people worldwide embrace their own health and Silicon Valley are stepping up research and and wellness destinies, these trends will continue investment. The wellness travel space, in very to expand – and our own personal moonshots will creative ways, is moving from experiential to truly become worthwhile goals in 2018 and beyond. emotional and transformative travel. Forward thinking medical professionals are looking at how Global Wellness Summit | 1 Whether “magic” or medicinal, shrooms’ superpowers come to light. TREND #1 Mushrooms Emerge from Underground From more magic mushroom research, microdosing and retreats - to a profusion of superpower mushrooms infused in foods, drinks and beauty products The 2017 Global Wellness Summit kicked off with Schwartzberg also analyzed the ancient history, a serious dose of…mushrooms. and eye-opening new clinical evidence, for that most “underground” variety of all: Psychedelic Award-winning filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg’s magic shrooms, those 200 species containing opening talk sneak-previewed his extraordinary psilocybin that alter the mind by forging new new film on the unappreciated power of neural pathways in the brain. For thousands of mushrooms: From their crucial role in Earth’s years magic mushrooms were used in cultures ecosystem to the mounting medical evidence worldwide: From the Ancient Greeks (yes, that they’re uniquely effective human medicine. Plato and Socrates) to the Aztecs. And, in the Largely hidden from our eyes (mushrooms 1960s, leading medical institutions like Harvard only come to the surface to “fruit”, i.e. spread undertook studies indicating magic mushrooms’ their spores) the kingdom of fungi - neither serious promise for things like depression and vegetable or animal, but somewhere in between addiction. All of which came to a crashing, - is actually the largest set of organisms on the counterculture-fearing halt when many countries, planet. A vast underground network (like the like France (1966), the U.S. (1970), and the UK “Internet” of nature), mushrooms are Earth’s main (2005) made them (and other psychedelics) decomposers and their constant “munching” highly illegal drugs, putting the kibosh on this makes possible soil - and all plant, animal and important research for decades. human life. And while most westerners only toss a few white button mushrooms into their Well, now the research is again on fire, with spaghetti sauce (unlike Asian cultures that dozens of studies coming out of top universities embrace so many mushrooms as food and like Imperial College-London, NYU, UCLA, the medicine), Schwartzberg detailed the surging University of Zurich, and Johns Hopkins (with medical evidence for so many mushroom breeds: its dedicated Psilocybin Research institute) From lion’s mane’s ability to regrow nerve cells and on magic mushrooms’ too-powerful-to-be- prevent dementia to strong evidence that turkey tail ignored impact on everything from nicotine and mushrooms help our immune system fight cancer. alcohol addiction, PTSD, headaches, OCD – and Global Wellness Summit | 3 especially depression and anxiety…often with a “Brain resetting” magic mushrooms will start single dose, and with the positive effects lasting to emerge from underground: more people will months. As Roland Griffiths, PhD, one of the top microdose them as creativity and brain boosters U.S. psychopharmacologists and lead psilocybin (a Silicon Valley “start-up” practice now spreading investigator at Johns Hopkins, put it,1 “It’s a around the world). And, yes, magic mushroom Rip Van Winkle effect—after three decades of retreats (like MycoMeditations) will keep popping no research, we’re rubbing the sleep from our up in places where legal (whether Jamaica or the eyes.” Important research is just ahead: Compass Netherlands), where the “trip” gets combined with Pathways (with high-profile investors like Peter increasingly luxe wellness experiences. And we’ll Thiel, Mike Novogratz and Christian Angermayer) see movement on the legalization front, making is about to start major clinical trials testing this magic mushroom “moment” reminiscent of magic mushrooms’ impact on depression in